


Monster

by cukibola



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology, Hellenistic Religion & Lore, The Iliad - Homer
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Family Drama, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Light Angst, Minor Character Death, Non-Graphic Violence, POV First Person, Short One Shot, Sibling Rivalry, ares needs a hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-04
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-10-04 06:37:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17299631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cukibola/pseuds/cukibola
Summary: Ares, Greek god of war, violence, bravery, courage, honor and bloodlust has a few words to say to his rival, the goddess Athena.





	Monster

"You admire what you've done, don't you? I imagine you will be proud of the wounds you have inflicted on me: my black eye, my broken lip, my bleeding nose and the cuts still open in my body. Certainly, it was a mistake to attack you in the first place, knowing that you always win. Favorite daughter of Zeus they call you; goddess of wisdom, arts, strategy, military cunning, justice, craftsmanship. Both sides hail your name in the hope that their beloved goddess, Hera's favorite, will descend and help them. It is as if they did not know about your cold and selfish personality, as if they did not know that for you they are little more than tokens that can easily be sacrificed without dedicating a miserable second thought to them.

I disgust you. Don't roll your glaucous eyes, sister, I have seen perfectly how you observe me. You see me as an inferior being, not as an equal, a creature that in your opinion should not even be in Olympus, and that only remains in it because he is Hera's son. This is what my own father, our father, has shouted at me; and knowing you and your cowardly nature, you think exactly the same thing. Yes, I have called you a coward because that is what you are. You never look your enemy in the eye, and I refer to the trials when, without a single thought, you ripped off my armor and beat me to death. At no time did you look directly at me, I suppose, not out of cowardice, but out of your belief in being superior to me and everyone else. I do not know if I prefer your contempt or your indifference, to be honest. Yet I have seen how sometimes you do not even look at the enemy... because you are simply not present and you have let another, such as Diomedes, be in danger guided by your false promises of glory. You are two-faced and despicable, like your father, for I am nothing of his in his opinion anymore, in the first place.

Tell me, sister, why do you hate me? You have the affection and fame that I was denied. Is it because you were able to defeat me? Don't think of yourself as very special either, being unarmed and seeing everything in red as I was. Is that why? Do you hate me because I feel anger? Because I feel something other than your arrogance? I wouldn't really be surprised: you don't know what it's like to have feelings. I imagine you've never fallen in love: you haven't felt your heart beating more quickly than usual other than when you make a physical effort, you've never known the heat that the smallest contact of those you love provokes you, you don't know what it's like to smile beyond when someone flatters you. You gloat on yourself and nothing or anyone else. But, I'll tell you, I don't hate you.

Lo, my speech makes you laugh, judging by the cruel grimace you pretend to pass for a smile. At last I understand, you think I'm inferior because I have feelings. What can I do if I prefer to ally myself with the only woman in Olympus, besides Hestia, who has given me some kind of affection—even if Pandemos doesn't really love me? Neither you nor my mother have ever done the last or the first, what did you expect? And don't you dare to give me a little speech about loyalty, because you know very little about that or you don't really care. I know that deep down, if you had the opportunity and the motive, you wouldn't hesitate to sell us all as your false and two-faced spirit has shown for ages. What am I going to do to him if I feel humiliated when, and I recognize that I should not have intervened in the war directly, Zeus shouts at me and insults me only to forgive you and the useless twins of Leto? And what am I going to do if my anger and my love combine when I discover that I could have helped to cause my son's death! What am I going to do if you appear and stop me from helping your beloved Greeks—who you fill with boasting words about how useful you are on their side—no more and no less! tearing off my armor. Yet I look at you neither with hatred nor with contempt nor with indifference; I look at you with pity.

What you are feeling right now, Athena, judging by how your gaze intends to stab me and your nostrils open, is called "anger" and "humiliation". From the experience of our interactions I will tell you that you get used to it. I am surprised that you can feel them. I'm surprised you can feel something, in fact. That is why I look at you with pity: you are a cold being who rejoices in the physical and mental suffering of others, suffering that you are more than willing to allow and provoke. Especially, if you are later praised. You will never know what a gentle embrace is, you will never know the pleasure of sex, you will never know the pride of seeing your children prosper. You will never know what it feels like when sadness invades you when you lose them, the fury of trying to recover them, the desolation of not achieving it, or the joy of achieving it. Of course not, for you we are only objects for a certain purpose and little more. That's why I feel sorry for you.

Aim again your spear at me, offended—you offended by my words, who would say it!—by my words of truth. You don't like it, do you, truthfully, that someone treats you in an opposite way to your hymns and praises? Don't you like the truth? No, of course you don't like the truth, you natural liar. You claim to be worried about the Greeks, but you don't really try to help them any more than by humiliating me even if I'm on your side. Where were you when Ascalaphus died and I had to bury him with my own hands? Probably pimping out your abilities as a goddess of war. Dirty war, dishonorable, cowardly. Useful? Surely Glorious? Never. I want to laugh at you right now, but my own desolation does not allow me to do that, I am sorry. Consider this verbiage my way of overcoming my feelings, those that you deny.

Because what happens is that you deny every time you feel something that plunges your status as a great goddess above everything and everyone else. That is why I feel sorry for you, Athena, favorite daughter of Zeus, favorite of Hera, mistress of Athens. Because you are cruel, cold, egocentric, deceitful and manipulative. Because you will never know what true happiness is, the importance of sadness and the power of rage. Because you will actively reject those feelings that I propose to you in order to continue being a damned impossible. I'm sorry. I feel sorry for you.

It doesn't matter if you put your weapon away and whispered that you are going to look for something to heal my wounds. You have said it again with your usual indifferent tone and without addressing me directly. In truth, you are not very different from the monster whose head hangs from your Aegis."

**Author's Note:**

> Glaucous: Eye color between blue, green and grey.   
> Pandemos: In Plato, there were two Aphrodites: Urania, who was born of Uranus' genitalia (goddess of spiritual love, philosophy and homosexuality); and Pandemos, daughter of Zeus and Dione, the one that features in the Iliad (goddess of physical love, patriotism and heterosexuality)  
> Ascalaphus: Ascalaphus of Orchomenus was a son of Ares and Astyoche. He was killed during the Trojan War, his death upsetting his father.   
> Aegis: In Athena's case, a breastplate made of goat skin or the skin of Pallas, with snakes as fringes. There, she hanged Medusa's head, rather than in a shield (her aegis was mistaken with that of Zeus, which was a shield)


End file.
